News in Brief: Body & Brain

Ear infection mix

What’s living in children’s noses could determine whether they get ear infections. Researchers from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania took swabs from the noses of sick children with and without ear infections. Kids with ear infections were more likely to carry Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, a major cause of pneumonia and ear infections. Some other types of bacteria seemed to protect against both Streptococcus and ear infections, the researchers reported online February 1 in mBio. Yet other types of bacteria promoted ear infection, including types that don’t cause ear infections themselves. The findings could lead to new ways to prevent ear infections.
Fiber may boost longevity

A high-fiber diet may contribute to a longer life, scientists report February 14 in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers consulted data from more than 380,000 men and women who completed diet questionnaires in the 1990s. By tracking death records over nine years, scientists from the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Md., determined that people consuming the most fiber were about 20 percent less likely to die of any cause during the study than people getting the least. Fiber from grains outweighed fiber from fruits, vegetables or beans in both men and women — but particularly in men..
Lavender oil vs. fungus

Lavender oil can knock out drug-resistant fungi called dermatophytes, lab-dish tests show. Distilled from the Iberian shrub Lavandula viridis L’Hér, the oil inhibited dermatophytes by attacking their cell membranes. It also proved promising against Candida fungi. Dermatophytes cause athletes’ foot, ringworm and nail infections, while Candida causes yeast infections. Researchers at the University of Coimbra in Portugal report the results in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The active ingredient in the lavender oil appears to be an organic compound called alpha-pinene, they note. More tests are planned.

ALS on the move

Harmful proteins responsible for progressive, fatal ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, can quickly hop from nerve cell to nerve cell, researchers from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge report online February 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team watched as misfolded clumps of the protein, called superoxide dismutase-1, made their way into nerve cells and induced normally harmless versions of the protein to clump up. These misfolded groups then popped out of the infected cell and into neighboring cells. This cycle is similar to how prions — the infectious proteins behind brain-wasting conditions such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease — spread through the brain. How the brain rewires
Nerve cells sprouting new connections are likely responsible for the brain’s ability to reroute sensory information after a serious spinal injury, an international team reports online February 16 in the Journal of Neuroscience. The results of the study, which was based on brain scans of volunteers with spinal injuries, runs counter to the theory that this job switch can be explained by the awakening of existing but dormant nerve cell connections.

News in Brief: Genes & Cells

Heritable sleep

Morning larks can thank their parents for their early waking habit. The team captured physical activity using monitors worn on the hip and used sleep diaries to learn the sleep habits of 723 Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Penn. This insular population lives free from many sleep-confounding technological gadgets. On average, men work up at 4:59 a.m., while women slept in until about 5:14 a.m. Whether a subject rose early or late depended heavily on the waking habits of his or her relatives, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues report in an upcoming Sleep.

Gene screens find incest

Genetic tests used to diagnose children with disabilities can also turn up evidence of incest. Assays designed to look for mutations also spot genome regions that contain far too little diversity, a sign that the parents are first-degree relatives. Several such cases have been identified already, scientists from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston report in the Feb. 12 Lancet. Finding incest can aid diagnosis and treatment of inherited disorders, since incest can lead to disabilities. But the information also raises thorny ethical issues, such as whether to report potential criminal conduct or to inform parents about what could be revealed before testing a child.

Flu changes

Some flu mutations go hand-in-hand, a new study finds. The results, appearing February 17 in PLoS Genetics, may help scientists predict what the next season’s flu will look like, enabling more effective vaccines. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and colleagues scrutinized genetic changes for 40 years of different flu strains. Some of these mutations worked as a team, so that seeing one mutation increased the likelihood of the other one showing up in the next few years. The new technique was able to pick out several well-known mutations that confer Tamiflu resistance. The method may help researchers create consistently effective flu vaccines.

Gonorrhea got human DNA

Gonorrhea bacteria borrowed a piece of human DNA, researchers have discovered. Bacteria swap genetic material regularly, but it is rare for microbes to pick up DNA from their hosts. Seven of 62 strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae studied contained a piece of human DNA known as an L1 element, a team at Northwestern University in Chicago reports online February 14 in the online journal mBio. Closely related species of Neisseria, including one that causes meningitis, do not have the human DNA, leading the researchers to speculate that gonorrhea bacteria picked up the L1 fragment relatively recently in evolutionary history.

Developmental difference

Mice are early bloomers, a study of the early development of mice and cattle reveals. Mice make the decision about which cells in the early embryo will form the placenta far earlier than cattle do, Debra Berg and colleagues at the AgResearch Crown Research Institute in Hamilton, New Zealand, report in the Feb. 15 Developmental Cell. Humans, pigs, rabbits and other mammals may follow the cattle’s timeline more closely than the mouse developmental clock, suggesting that cattle might be better animals to study than mice to understand the earliest stages of human development.


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